Isidore of Seville

Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent...

St. Isidore of Seville (or Isidorus Hispalensis; c. 560 – April 4, 636), Archbishop of Seville, was the author of the encyclopaedic [Etymologiae] (or Origines), a work prized during the Middle Ages as a compendium of all human knowledge. He is now accepted by many as the patron saint of computing and the Internet.

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Without music there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony.

And without music there can be no perfect knowledge, for there is nothing without it. For even the universe itself is said to have been put together with a certain harmony of sounds, and the very heavens revolve under the guidance of harmony.

Many creatures go through a natural change and by decay pass into different forms, as bees [are formed] by the decaying flesh of calves, as beetles from horses, locusts from mules, scorpions from crabs.

Theological necessity was among the main reasons which led St. Isidore of Seville, in the seventh century, to incorporate this theory [of the later development of insects out of carrion, following the initial creation], supported by St. Basil and St. Augustine, into his great encyclopedic work [Etymologiae] which gave materials for thought on God and Nature to so many generations. He familiarized the theological world still further with the doctrine of secondary creation, giving such examples of it as that "bees are generated from decomposed veal, beetles from horseflesh, grasshoppers from mules, scorpions from crabs," and, in order to give still stronger force to the idea of such transformations, he dwells on the biblical account of Nebuchadnezzar, which appears to have taken strong hold upon medieval thought in science, and he declares that other human beings had been changed into animals, especially into swine, wolves, and owls.